Yes...I can bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan, but damn it! You had better at least help with the dishes!

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Where I Lived

14515 West 60th Terrace

Shawnee, Kansas 66216

I remember it to this day. My dad built that house. He did
it with his bare hands. It was one of the first in that subdivision. Fields and
grass were all around the lot. There are a million houses in all directions of
it now, but not then. In fact there were so many streets that just “ended” near
that house. So many that would later become main thoroughfares but that back
then, 33 years ago (Whoa!That just sunk in 33 years ago) those streets
went exactly nowhere.

I was seven when we moved there. I remember coming there when
it was not even close to being finished. I remember the smell of the fresh cut
wood. I still love that smell. Both my father and my husband build houses by
trade so it’s a smell ingrained in my soul. I could tell a thousand vivid
stories about that house, but I think I’ll let this one just be about the bones
of that house.

I watched it go up. I was so excited to see each new phase.
I was especially excited to stand in what would soon be my bedroom. I’d sit on
the plywood floor looking up at the clear blue sky before the roof was put on
and I’d imagine the colors it would be painted. I’d imagine where my furniture
would go and I’d imagine where each and every one of my treasured possesions would
be housed. I got first pick, behind my parents of course, of rooms. I picked
the one closest to bathroom. I wanted my own and this would be the next best
thing. The other room also had the attic access in the closet and that kind
of creeped me out.

I remember walking through the hall and into the dining
room. I would peer over the edge of the opening where a sliding door would soon
go into the mud caked back yard. I plotted where a swing set would be placed
and imagined the lush grass I’d soon play in. There would later be a tiny
playhouse looking just like the big house right there at the bottom of the
stairs to a deck that was not yet built. I remember standing in the kitchen and
wondering what each cubby and dividing wood structure would hold. A
refrigerator or stove, a desk alcove, the sink, or a row of cabinets, what would
it be? I watched little by little as it all took shape.

I was more knowledgeable at nine, about how these things went
together than most adults. This was the third new house my dad had built for
us. The first one we never lived in as a passer by loved it so much that he
made an offer on it before it was even finished. The second one we lived in for
only a year or two, and this one we’d planned on the same. It would not later
play out that way. My parents would soon divorce and I’d actually spend the
entire rest of my childhood in that house. My dad would build a thousand more
new houses for other families, but never again one for his "happy" little family.

By the time I left that house when I was 18, I knew it like
the back of my hand. I could have found my way around every corner, closet, and
crevice wearing a blindfold. It was such and intimate place to me. I knew all
of its flaws. She had a lot of them. I sometimes wonder if anyone has ever fixed any of them. The
drawer in the guest bathroom (that was to the left if you are looking in the
mirror) did not open all the way. It hit the door jam at about four inches open.
It was only enough room for a small hand to fit. We kept almost nothing in
that drawer. There was another just like it in the kitchen. When you opened
that one it would hit the dials of the dishwasher. My mom kept her coupons in
that drawer. The light on the left side of the front door if you were facing the house,
never came on. No matter how much my dad tried to trace back the wiring, he
could never make it come on. The floor of the “coat closet” was the ceiling of
the stairwell to the basement. That meant that the floor in that closet was
slanted and not flat. You could store nothing in that closet unless it fit on
the shelf over the coats. There was a light switch at the bottom of the stairs
to the playroom. It had four switches on the plate, and one of them went to absolutely
nothing. It was always a mystery what it was even purposed for in the first
place.

I loved that house. I guess I sort of imagined we’d always
live there. I was broken when my mom told me she wanted to leave it. I don’t know
why I loved it so much. So many bad things happened in that house. I can
remember so many bad things and so very few really great things. I think I
wanted to stay because so much of my life passed there, so many of my formative
years. So much of my regular ordinary unimportant life happened there. Things like first kisses with boys, first dates, junior high and high school, best
friends, graduations, curfews, first cars, fights with my sister, starting periods, having crushes, dying pets, planting flowers, honor rolls,
and all of those other things regular life brings in and out. My sister broke my Prince
album on the floor of the basement. We made up dance routines to the soundtrack
of Xanadu. I roller skated to Def Leopard in the garage. I threw a party there my
senior year and over 100 people came (it was epic). I burnt the hell out
of some cookies, in that kitchen, which caused the smoke alarm to go off and my sister to come
crawling from her room screaming, “Stop, drop, and roll.” I stepped in the neighbors dog poo in that yard. I was tired of that dog (Sandy) pooping in our yard so I gathered up all of it and threw it at their house. I had night terrors in my perfect fuscia bedroom where my
mom’s boyfriend stole my innocence and trust and replaced it with a hole that
sometimes to this day feels void. I saw my dad cry for the first time on the couch in the living room of that house when my
mom said she’d had enough. Fights between my parents (so many many fights), I
listened to in that house. Insignificant memories and life altering moments; all of them a part of
me.

When we left there, I wrote a note to the person who would
later live in my room. I hid it in the trim on the inside of the closet in my
bedroom. I wish I could tell you that I remember exactly what that note said. I
wish I knew whether or not someone ever found it. I remember only that in the note I said that I hoped they took good care of the house it wasn't her fault, and that I hoped this
bedroom brought better things to their life than it had brought to mine.

That house had good bones. That house had bad skeletons. I
loved that house. I hated it a little bit too I suppose.